The Real Reason For The Common Core

Here it is:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropy, and the foundation associated with Pearson, the giant textbook and school technology company, announced a partnership on Wednesday to create online reading and math courses aligned with the new academic standards that some 40 states have adopted in recent months.

The 24 new courses will use video, interactive software, games, social media and other digital materials to present math lessons for kindergarten through 10th grade and English lessons for kindergarten through 12th grade, Pearson and Gates officials said.

Widespread adoption of the new standards, known as the common core, has provoked a race among textbook publishers to revise their current classroom offerings so they align with the standards, and to produce new materials. The Gates-Pearson initiative appears to be the most ambitious such effort so far.

The Pearson Foundation is heading the course-writing effort. But Pearson Education, which owns textbook houses like Prentice Hall and sells an array of multimedia classroom tools, will market 20 of the new courses to schools and districts.

The Gates Foundation, which has promoted the common core standards movement in its philanthropy, is providing $3 million so that four of the 24 courses can be offered free to schools, partly to give educators a taste of how the digital courses can be used in classrooms.

“We’re hoping that by placing those four courses in a way that’s accessible, people will take a look at them and make connections,” said Mark Nieker, president of the Pearson Foundation.

In his educational work, Bill Gates has explored ways that new technologies can transform teaching. Vicki Phillips, a director at the Gates Foundation, said the partnership with Pearson was part of a “suite of investments” totaling more than $20 million that the foundation was undertaking, all of which involve new technology-based instructional approaches.

The new digital materials, Ms. Phillips said, “have the potential to fundamentally change the way students and teachers interact in the classroom.”

The partnership with the Gates Foundation could give Pearson a considerable advantage as textbook and learning technology companies position themselves in an education marketplace upended by the creation of the common standards.

“It’s a good deal for Pearson, and it’s good for Gates too, because it brings more attention to the standards,” said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, which has studied the evolution of state policies on the common core.

Pearson stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars and of course these online courses can only be run on Windows, Internet Explorer, and other Microsoft platforms.

And eventually these courses can be run from anywhere with any facilitator, so you can just fire the expensive teachers and hire cheap Mcfacilitators to run the whole shebang.

But Pearson and Gates are in this for the kids, right?